760,000 women in Britain waiting for a gynecology appointment? That’s just the tip of the iceberg | Zoe Williams
THe Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has landed on a compelling image to illustrate the waiting list crisis in his field. If all 760,000 women waiting for a gynecology appointment on the NHS were to queue, the queue would stretch from London to Exeter. It’s great for visualization, but it also makes clear what a criminal waste of human energy this represents: the terrible, urgent endlessness. I wouldn’t be able to stand in the queue for Kew Gardens now, let alone if I was in constant pain.
Given this, plus a crisis in maternity care – almost half of all services last year were marked as inadequate or in need of improvement – it would be safe to say that it is women who suffer the most when healthcare is underfunded. But I have to mention the guy from my local car rental company. I only rent a car to go to one place (Ramsgate, thanks for asking) and I only go in alternating school holidays, so just under once a quarter. Every time I’ve been there this year, he’s been back on the waiting list for an operation that was canceled at the last minute. The system doesn’t work for anyone.
Similarly, you could look at the number of people paying for private treatments – private sector turnover went from £1.3 billion to £4.9 billion under the Coalition and then Tory governments – and say that waiting lists are more difficult for people with low incomes. They have fewer options, live longer with pain and have to take time off work more often. But again, this is not a bias of the system; this is a broken system that increases existing inequality, because that’s what broken systems do.
Socially, the waiting list crisis gives us the perfect negative picture of what the NHS is built for. Its stated purpose was to “promote good health for all citizens,” but in reality it created an area of absolute equality, blind to any existing disadvantage. And as much as we didn’t mention this fiefdom of socialism in the midst of a marketized life, it produced greater equality everywhere. I would like to see a Minister of Health be the first to fight for that and put ‘efficiency’ in a footnote.